1. Recently Kevin Pine shared an argument he
useswith clients in his site design business. It
goes like this.
managed hosting
2. Picture the greeter in WalMart stores, the one that gives youa warm
welcome, offers you a cart and a flyer announcing specialsfor the day
Suppose this person was directed to turn asideevery tenth person who enters
the store, saying, "Sorry, we don'twant your business today " Then asks them
to leave If this were repeated throughout all stores, WalMart's bottomline
would drop One might guess by 10%, the number of peoplebeing turned away
But the drop would be considerably more, forcosts of salaries, inventory,
general overhead and such wouldremain constant at least in the short term
Thus the drop mightexceed 20% No successful business is likely to try this
"new" technique,for it obviously would lead quickly to bankruptcy Why then
doso many webmasters apply similar methods with such determination? A
Partial Answer Anyone who has ever created anything, be it a bookcase,
anovel, or a website, knows how difficult it is to be objectiveabout the results of
efforts largely driven by our emotions Since we created it, we even embrace
flaws we recognize For todo otherwise might mean discarding the result and
beginning anew To succeed, a writer must discover what people want to
readand a pleasing way to present their content That is, they finda way to
satisfy the needs of their customers Else successeludes them The same is so
of home builders, musicians, andshopkeepers of all kinds It is also true of
4. The Lack Of A Reality Check If you open a brick & mortar business, up
front costs must be expended And the on going monthly expense begins
immediately Profits must soon cover, else you go broke Each day you total
your gross, subtract a percentage for overhead, and quickly determine how
much you can tuck into your pocket Except that start up costs are minimal,
the above appliesequally to an online business However, many choose to
ignorethese realities They can afford to do so for a considerableperiod of time,
because the overhead on a website amounts topocket money Since they do
not have to pay the rent or for newinventory, they can avoid facing the reality
of impending failurealmost indefinitely Solid Guidelines Are Absent One of the
problems all webmasters face is the lack ofuniform guidelines In opening an
offline business, you haveample resources available that point the way to
success Whilemany also apply to an online business, specifics about the
Webare lacking Many come to the Web determined to do their own thing at
anycost Go for it, if that's your wish But to succeed, reversethe emphasis Do
what your visitors want in the way they want it done
5. First Comes A Flawless Site If your website is not closing sales or achieving
itspurpose, as in generating leads, then fix it Else pack it in This is the reality
of offline marketing lacking on the Web Offline, shutting down will soon be
forced upon a failingbusiness Online, valuable time and dollars are wasted
insustaining a site that does not get the job done Since we are not being
hounded by bill collectors, we continue with some vague hope things will
somehow magically turn around If you don't know what needs doing to put
your site on track, get some help Look for forums or newsgroups into
siteperformance Swap your time in evaluating the sites of others,for their's in
examining yours If you can afford it, hire a professional Learn what he or she
knows that will help Then go find another No oneindividual has the whole of
this game in hand Learn The Rules If you've been online for a time, you
already know somerules You may need to learn more
6.
7. Use Verdana or Ariel on awhite background, for either is much easier to read
on a monitorthan Times Roman Limit main or bounding table widths to
600pixels Narrow cells/columns as required so that line lengthsare a
maximum of 65 characters These are simple things Whilemany continue to
debate them, it is wasted effort While breaking these rules may not turn away
ten percent ofyour visitors as our hypothetical WalMart greeter did, why riskit?
Why do anything that annoys a visitor, thus encouraging himor her to leave?
While it's true you can not please everyone, italso makes sense to minimize
site characteristics that may annoy About Branding Of the continuing debates
about doing business on the Web,the one I ignore completely is the notion of
branding " , the quicker picker upper " This is branding Chances are you
connect this immediately to Bounty paper towels You may even remember
one of the actresses featured in the TV commercials If I were standing before
a shelf of paper towels, all thingsbeing equal, I'd probably reach for Bounty
8. But when I think ofthe megabucks expended in boosting this name, it's difficult
tobelieve the manufacturer has recovered costs There's not muchprofit margin
in paper towels Forget It On the Web, branding is often associated with splash
or entrypages, those artsy slow-loading presentations within which youmust
find a link to the main site This won't work for a small business You have no
chance ofobtaining brand name recognition without a major corporatepresence
and an awesome dollar commitment So forget branding And forget those
splash pages Are You Turning Away N% Of Your Visitors? The validity of
many rules can be difficult to demonstrate This is a no-brainer Check the hits
on managed hosting your splash page andcompare the count to that of the
page it links to Now tell me you are confident you can succeed in
businessturning away over ten percent of your potential customers WalMart
couldn't make it happen And neither can you
